Cosi Fan Tutti

by Michael Dibdin

  With another of her rippling laughs, Libera pulled him inside and closed the window.

  Eccoci alla gran crisi

  Higher up the Vomero, on Via Cimarosa, the streets were more brightly lit and there were still a few people about. Nevertheless, Pasquale circled the lugubrious palazzo which was his passengers’ destination for so long that they finally grew restless.

  ‘There’s no point in trying to bump up the fare, since the meter’s not even running,’ Valeria Squillace remarked tartly. She had not taken to Pasquale, whom she regarded as low class and over-familiar.

  ‘Pascà and I have an informal arrangement,’ Aurelio Zen intervened in a diplomatic tone. ‘The fare is calculated on a sliding scale agreed in advance and payable within a mutually acceptable period subject to financing and handling costs where applicable, right Pascà? So why the hell don’t you take us straight home?’

  ‘And those thugs, duttò?’ demanded Pasquale. ‘The two we had to shake this afternoon?’

  Zen frowned. He had already forgotten them.

  ‘They followed us from outside this very building,’ the cabby reminded him. ‘Once they lost us at the hotel, they’ll most likely have come back to wait. They must have found out you’re staying here.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many movies, Pascà.’

  ‘Never, duttò! My wife took me to the cinema once, back in the fifties. I couldn’t sleep for weeks afterwards. Even now I have nightmares about it.’

  He continued to weave his way down side-streets and alleys, peering attentively into the cars parked higgledy-piggledy to either side. Unable to find any excuse for further delay, he finally drew up outside the door. Zen got out and held the door open for Valeria.

  ‘Goodnight, Pascà.’

  The driver rooted around in his pocket and handed Zen a small battered oval box of what appeared to be silver.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Zen.

  Pasquale shrugged.

  ‘Keep it on you at all times. Don’t even go to bed without it, understand? As long as you have it with you, you’ll be all right.’

  Zen smiled broadly, but there was no question that Pasquale was absolutely serious.

  ‘Are you coming, Alfonso?’ Valeria demanded pointedly.

  Zen put the box in his pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  The taxi pulled away, leaving Zen standing on the kerb with a sense of dread which had nothing to do with Pasquale’s imaginary assassins. The feeling was accentuated when he turned to find Valeria Squillace smiling at him in a way that needed no translation. But there was nothing for it but to follow her inside. In the cavernous entrance hall, a host of plaster statuary he had not noticed before leered down at him: prancing putti, writhing Hercules, ample Junos whose last scrap of drapery was about to slip off their heavily engorged nipples.

  ‘What a fabulous evening!’ Valeria enthused. ‘And those seats, Aurelio! They must have cost a fortune.’

  The tickets provided gratis by Giovan Battista Caputo had proved to be the best in the house, right in the centre of the dress circle. Zen smiled and shrugged.

  ‘An experience like that is priceless,’ he replied, even though he had personally found the opera to be poor stuff, thin and old-fashioned, with weak orchestration and no big tunes.

  The elevator clacked to a halt behind them. Zen opened the metal concertina gate and the glass-plated doors, ushered Valeria inside and activated the machinery into jerky life by dropping a fifty-lire coin in the slot. While the elevator rose in its wrought-iron cage, like a vertical coffin, towards the ceiling bedecked with writhing nudes, Zen took out the silver box Pasquale had given him and examined it in the yellowing light of the ceiling bulb. He pressed a catch on the side and the lid yawned open. Inside was a wad of cotton wool stained with some dark brown substance. It smelt musty and vaguely sweet, like rotten meat.

  ‘What’s that?’ demanded Valeria, wrinkling her nose. ‘Some fake saint’s relic, I suppose. Your new acquaintance is just the type to believe in nonsense like that.’

  Zen shrugged and put the box away as the elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Valeria, unlocking the front door. ‘There’s some parmigiana di melanzane I can heat up.’

  Zen shook his head.

  ‘I had some pizza earlier, thanks. I wouldn’t mind a glass of something, though …’

  Valeria opened a hatch in the fitted unit which covered the end wall, revealing a selection of bottles.

  ‘Help yourself. This one is particularly good. One of my cousins makes it with fruit from his country estate. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I want to call the girls.’

  Zen opened the elegantly asymmetrical decanter she indicated. The contents were as clear as the container, and keenly perfumed with cherries. He poured a small quantity into one of the hollowed knobs of crystal on the shelf above.

  ‘Signorina Orestina Squillace, please,’ Valeria said into the phone in heavily accented English. ‘Squillace. I don’t understand. Room 302. What? That’s impossible! Please check again. Really? Are you sure?’

  She hung up and turned to Zen.

  ‘The hotel says they’ve checked out.’

  ‘What? Where have they gone?’

  Valeria massaged her fingers nervously.

  ‘They didn’t say. Of course they may just have moved to another hotel, or maybe taken off on a trip somewhere, but it’s strange they didn’t phone and tell me. My God, I hope they’re all right! Maybe we should never have sent them off in the first place. If anything happens to them, I’ll never forgive myself.’

  His earlier scruples forgotten, Zen came over and took her hand comfortingly.

  ‘They may have phoned while we were at the opera. Try not to worry. I’m sure they’ll be all right.’

  She sighed and squeezed his hand. Their eyes met. Zen swiftly knocked back the rest of the cherry liqueur.

  ‘Superb!’ he said, disengaging his hand from hers.

  ‘Have some more.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And then come and sit down with me.’

  She dimmed the lights and put on some music.

  ‘Recognize this?’ she asked with a flirtatious glance.

  ‘Verdi?’

  Valeria laughed girlishly.

  ‘It’s what we heard this evening, silly! The seduction scene in the second act.’

  Zen filled the liqueur glass right to the brink, drank half of it and topped it up again. Glass in hand, he began circling the room as though searching for the exit.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ Valeria told him. ‘You’re making me nervous, prowling about like that. Besides, I’m still worried about the girls. Do something to distract me.’

  With a sense of impending but inevitable doom, Zen went to sit beside her on the sofa, his own sensation one of panic. Despite his age and experience, there were some situations he had never been able to handle gracefully. Turning down an offer like this was one.

  ‘You’ve been smoking,’ Valeria remarked, drawing closer to him.

  ‘Just the odd one.’

  ‘Have you got some on you?’

  ‘You want me to throw them away?’

  ‘I want you to give me one.’

  He looked at her in amazement.

  ‘But you told me you didn’t smoke! You told me …’

  She smiled charmingly.

  ‘That was just a test, to see if I had any power over you. As a matter of fact I used to smoke like a chimney. It was Manlio who made me give it up. He said it was unattractive in a woman. But Manlio’s dead, and I’m in a mood to do something silly.’

  Zen passed her his packet of Nazionali.

  ‘Nothing fancy, I’m afraid,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘I don’t need anything fancy. Just plain, simple pleasures. If it’s a little rough, that’s fine too.’

  When Zen held out his lighter she grasped his hand, although the flame was perfectly ste
ady. Replacing the lighter in his pocket, his fingers touched the mysterious silver box which Pasquale had insisted on lending him. Zen rubbed the smooth metal fervently. It was going to take a miracle to get him out of this one.

  Valeria leant forward so that her left breast pushed negligently against Zen’s jacket, which immediately began to emit the rising sequence of electronic chirps whose origin and meaning he had by now learned to recognize.

  Che sembianze! Che vestiti!

  The disturbing effect of midsummer night, to say nothing of the full moon, may have caused confusion to humans and even cats, but out at Capodichino the planes, thanks to their more advanced equipment, kept right on landing and taking off. Which was good news for Concetta Biancarosa Ausilia Olimpia Immacolata Scarlatti in Higgins, who had picked up a fare to the airport shortly after the conference at the pizzeria broke up.

  Now she was cruising the arrivals hall, watching for likely prospects among the passengers on an international flight which, according to the board, had just landed. If she had taken her turn in the rank outside, it would have made more sense to drive straight back into town without a fare, but Immacolata was not born yesterday nor yet the day before, and knew how to take care of herself in more ways than one, to say nothing of putting her linguistic talents to good use.

  Taking up a position near the automatic doors through which incoming passengers re-enter the real world, she assumed the long-suffering aspect of a Neapolitan matriarch awaiting the arrival of relatives on a flight already delayed for hours if not days. Her hunched stance, grimly stolid expression and air of defiant endurance made her as invisible as the official notices on the wall which no one ever read. ‘Eh, ’a nonna,’ everyone thought, and looked away. Which was just as well, because if she had been spotted touting and reported to the Camorra clan which regulated cab traffic at the airport, and took a cut of the resulting trade, the consequences were likely to have been extremely limiting both socially and professionally. Naples was a challenging city for those confined to a wheelchair.

  Passengers from the flight she had noticed had started emerging in dribs and drabs, but so far none of them looked suitable for her purposes, and Immacolata had learned to wait for exactly the right client before moving in. She couldn’t risk making her pitch more than once, so it had to stick. Her patience was rewarded in the form of two young women pushing a trolley laden with expensive suitcases and looking about them with an air of slight trepidation. One of them was more or less conventionally dressed, although with that fatal lack of focus of which the English seemed to make a virtue. Her companion’s appearance represented another aspect of those alien cultural codes which, even after almost ten years, Immacolata had been forced to admit that she would never crack. Taller and sparer, she had cropped black hair, with two silver rings in her pierced nostril and a tattoo of some fabulous reptile on her throat. Her jeans had holes torn or cut at the knees, above which she wore a man’s shirt left open to her evidently unsupported breasts and a black leather jacket sporting an aggressive quantity of zippering and other metal accoutrements.

  Not, at first sight, what Immacolata was looking for. But a quick check of the women’s shoes – always the key – revealed that between them the couple were carrying upwards of three quarters of a million lire underfoot. Their hesitant demeanour made it equally obvious that they were not expecting anyone to meet them. Perfect. Immacolata fell in behind them and then casually drew alongside, as though she were just another weary traveller heading for the exit.

  ‘Excuse me, ladies!’ she whispered in the tones of one born well within hearing of Bow Bells. The two women stopped and looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘You’ll be wanting a ride into town, I dare say,’ Immacolata continued rapidly, urging them on towards the door. ‘Perhaps somewhere to stay, too. A nice cosy residential hotel, safe and clean but not too pricey, know what I mean? I know just the place. Put yourself in Auntie Imma’s hands, my dears. I’ll see you right!’

  The women consulted briefly in a silent glance. Then the taller one turned back to Immacolata with an amused smile.

  ‘That’s good. These is our baggages.’

  Oh bella improvvisata!

  And when they finally made it to the top of the steps, guess what? The car was gone.

  Of course, everyone knew that parking your car on the street in Naples was just asking for trouble, to such an extent that some insurance companies refused to offer coverage at any price. This was all the more true in the case of a luxury import, which was no doubt why Don Ermanno had had his Jaguar equipped with a variety of anti-theft devices, including special locks and two alarm systems.

  Nevertheless, it was gone. This was particularly galling for Gesualdo and Sabatino, who were used to getting a measure of respect from the trash who pulled these kind of jobs, and even more because this unexpected lack of mobility was going to make it difficult if not impossible to carry out the assignment for which they had reluctantly torn themselves away from the embraces of their respective conquests and rushed at full speed up the darkened alleyway of the Scalini del Petraio as though through infinitely thin, tenuous layers of black satin.

  It was Gesualdo who had taken the call, rolling naked out of bed and fumbling amongst his clothes until he located the phone.

  ‘We just had a hit,’ a voice said.

  ‘Which line?’

  ‘Zembla.’

  ‘Give me play-back.’

  A scratchy silence intervened, then a new set of voices came on the line.

  ‘… remember that we spoke earlier today. I’m now in a position to offer you the information I mentioned then.’

  ‘Regarding what?’

  ‘Regarding the present whereabouts of Attilio Abate, Luca Della Ragione and Ermanno Vallifuoco.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Why should I care about that?’

  A faint laugh, like an exhalation of air bellying out the curtains and making the candles flicker.

  ‘I think we both know the answer to that, Don Orlando. Excuse me. Signor Zembla, I mean.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Well, I’m listening.’

  ‘As I have already had occasion to remark, these phones are notoriously insecure. In the circumstances, I hope you will not object to a personal meeting. If you will leave the building in which Signor Squillace’s apartment is situated and proceed north on foot towards Piazza degli Artisti, I will make contact at some suitable point.’

  ‘It’s very late …’

  ‘Later than you think, perhaps. That’s why this information is so vital and so sensitive.’

  The recording dissolved in a haze of crackles, then Gesualdo’s caller came back on the line.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said.

  ‘Caller’s number?’

  ‘Phone box at a service station on the motorway.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Six and a half minutes ago. You’d better get moving.’

  And so they had, although Sabatino had been decidedly reluctant. He had been having a very pleasant time with Libera, who was both compliant and inventive, with some interesting moves he hadn’t come across before. Just because Gesualdo’s partner had proved to be less forthcoming seemed at first no reason to drag him, Sabatino, out on a wild goose chase at that time at night.

  But Gesualdo rapidly made it clear that they had no choice. Not only was Alfonso Zembla not what he seemed, but it now appeared that his alternative identity as ‘Aurelio Zen’ was, as they had suspected, also a fake. It was only on hearing the anonymous caller address him as Don Orlando that Gesualdo realized that the avuncular, mild-mannered, slightly ineffectual individual who had insinuated himself into their lives bore a striking resemblance to Don Orlando Pagano, head of one of the leading clans in the city, who had recently disappeared from circulation. His voice was all wrong for a Neapolitan, but Don Orlando had spent several years in exile near Verona as a guest of the government, and could probably fake a cre
ditable Northern accent.

  As if this was not enough, the caller had explicitly promised ‘vital and sensitive’ information concerning the present whereabouts of the three supposed victims of the Strade Pulite group. If there were a grain of truth in this, it might represent a potentially fatal breach of security within this mysterious organization. And the whole conversation was preserved on tape, along with Gioacchino’s injunction to ‘get going’. They would not be forgiven if they let such a chance slip.

  The first stage had been bad enough: the hurried dressing, the garbled explanations, the mad dash up those steps through the black drapery of the night. Even with all the time they put in at the gym, Gesualdo and Sabatino were soon gasping for breath. And then the discovery that some son of a whore – some half-smart low-life with no connections, some small-time self-starter who couldn’t even get a job with a recognized team – had ripped off their car, reducing them to the expedient of walking, running, stumbling and crawling up another half-mile or more of this terrible Via Crucis, tormented not only by the physical stress but even more by the fear that it was all in vain, that by the time they got there it would be too late.

  At length they emerged, panting and sweating, on the blessedly straight and flat expanses of Via Cimarosa. There was no one in sight, no unusual activity, no sign of anything of interest. They walked down the street past a succession of turn-of-the-century apartment blocks, the street doors securely locked, the shuttered windows above dark. Somewhere in the distance a deep, businesslike motor roared along a street lower down the hill. Then Sabatino pulled Gesualdo sharply into an adjacent doorway. A figure, tall, dark and spare, had appeared in the entrance of a building some distance ahead. The man paused briefly, looking about, then stepped out on to the pavement and walked off at a steady pace, heading north.

  Al concertato loco

  By contrast, Aurelio Zen was in the best of humours. The phone call he had just received effectively killed two birds with one stone. Not only had it got him off the hook with Valeria Squillace, romantically speaking, but if his anonymous informant was telling anything like the truth – and what interest could he have in doing otherwise? – Zen might well be in a position to hand the Questura not only the information he had extracted from John Viviani concerning the Marotta stabbing, but also a substantial bonus in the form of a major breakthrough in the terrorist case currently occupying national attention. After a coup like that, he could return to his former state of absentee indolence without the slightest risk of any reprisals.